This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019 and 2020. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Checklist alignment: whether the practices associated with the HASS Lost and Found element are in place. These might not have a numeric data point that makes sense to collect and track.
  4. Data status: the state of the data received from the shelter, highlighting missing pieces and potential areas for improvement.
  5. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

Executive Summary

  1. RTH rates for dogs have decreased from 22% 2019 to 15% 2020 and remained similar in the first half of 2021. RTH for cats was around 1% across all years.
  2. The decrease in rate was for RTH from the shelter, as field RTH rates remained a constant 4% of field intakes in all three years, whereas the Shelter RTH rates for field intakes decreased from 18% in 2019 to 12 and 13% in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
  3. The RTH rates from animals who did not come from the field also decreased from 2019 (21%) to 2020 (14%) to 2021 (8%).
  4. Despite this sharp decrease in RTH of OTC dogs, even since the lowest rate of 2-3% in March-April 2020, the rate has been steadily increasing up to 11% in June 2021.
  5. The median length of stay for RTH outcomes is 17 days lower than stray intakes with other outcomes. Assuming a $30 daily cost of care per dog, we can estimate that RTH outcomes saved the shelter $1.01m in 2019, $351k in 2020, and $178k in 2021. Using the average length of stay would result in even higher amounts.
  6. Returning even an extra 10% of the dogs who came in as strays so far in 2021 would have resulted in saving roughly $100k.
  7. The 2017-2018 data sent to HASS allowed to build stray intake/RTH rate maps, showing the number of stray dogs coming in and the return rate for each ZIP Code. This was not available for newer data based on what has been sent so far.
  8. Of the strays who got RTO outcomes in 2017-2018 with an identifiable found and owner addresses (704 dogs), 51% were found less than a mile away from home, and half of those (25% of all dogs) were found less than a block away from home. 20% of all dogs were found more than 5 miles away.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species. RTH Rate is calculated as the portion of returned animals that came in as strays out of stray animals. Animals younger than 6 weeks are excluded (this could be easily changed).

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs per year.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 7480 59 0.01
Cat 2020 4361 22 0.01
Cat 2021 2726 11 0.00
Dog 2019 9693 2095 0.22
Dog 2020 4604 695 0.15
Dog 2021 2245 349 0.16
Other 2019 139 12 0.09
Other 2020 99 2 0.02
Other 2021 64 4 0.06

Field Intake RTH Rate

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field (using subtype ‘ACO Pickup / Drop Off’ or ‘Stray-Agency’ – are these the right values to include?). These are then split by RTH method between field (using outcome_subtype ‘RTO Field’) and shelter (all other values).

Cats rates are negligible, and while the in-field return rate for dogs is steady, the shelter rate decreased from 2019 to 2020 and 2021.

Species Year Field_Strays RTH_Subtype Field_RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1000 Field Return 8 0.01
Cat 2019 1000 Shelter Return 5 0.00
Cat 2020 844 Field Return 8 0.01
Cat 2020 844 Shelter Return 2 0.00
Cat 2021 598 Field Return 2 0.00
Cat 2021 598 Shelter Return 4 0.01
Dog 2019 5496 Field Return 227 0.04
Dog 2019 5496 Shelter Return 990 0.18
Dog 2020 3074 Field Return 115 0.04
Dog 2020 3074 Shelter Return 368 0.12
Dog 2021 1833 Field Return 79 0.04
Dog 2021 1833 Shelter Return 237 0.13

Shelter RTH Rate by Species

This shows RTH rates for OTC strays, which includes subtypes ‘Public Drop Off’ and ‘Possible Owner’. These rates also decline from 2019 to 2020 and further in 2021.

Species Year OTC_Strays Shelter_RTH RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 4276 46 0.01
Cat 2020 1930 12 0.01
Cat 2021 1173 5 0.00
Dog 2019 4140 865 0.21
Dog 2020 1481 210 0.14
Dog 2021 401 32 0.08

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Overall RTH

Again, we start with all RTH (both field and shelter), for cats and dogs. For dogs, there is a clear decrease in the beginning of the pandemic to June 2020, an increase in July 2020 and then a zigzag of better or worse months.

Field RTH (Dogs)

This is the same figure, but only counting field strays, and showing only dogs due to cats’ low numbers. The different lines split the rate of return by Field RTH or in-shelter RTH, so in Jan 2019, for example, 29% of field stray intakes were returned in the shelter and an extra 2% were returned in the field.

The in-shelter RTH numbers zigzag a lot while moderately decreasing over time, while Field returns remain fairly stable except for a few particularly low (Aug 2019, Oct 2020, Dec 2020) and high (Nov 2020, Feb 2021) months.

Shelter RTH

This figure only counts strays who did not come from the field. Before the pandemic the rate was pretty unstable, going between peaks of 25% and lows of 15%, while starting March 2020 there was a sharp decrease to around 5% levels. Since then, however, there is a slow increase every month up to 11% in June 2021.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

The trends for dogs and cats are very similar, except the more noticeable spike for cats in summer months.

Stray Intake Subtypes

Across all years, 39% of strays come the field (counting Stray-Agency and ACO) and the 46% over the counter. 13% of stray intakes were Sun City or Community cats, and other subtypes are very infrequent (1% and lower).

Money Saved by RTH

This could be another useful metrics to reflect the benefits of RTH over other outcome types. It takes into account three components:

  1. The number of stray intakes with RTH outcome.
  2. The daily cost of care.
  3. The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays. This is shown in the table below – 17 days for dogs and 10 for cats. The average LOS shows an even more extreme difference of about 30 days, but the big difference from the median value suggests some particularly high values are swaying it, so the more conservative values will be used.

Let’s look at dogs, as these very by and large most RTHs:

There were 2095 strays who got RTH in 2019, 695 in 2020, and 349 in 2021 (up to end of June). Assuming 30$ cost of daily care per dog, and given the length-of-stay differences, We can estimate that return-to-homes saved the shelter \(2095*30*17=1,068,450\$\) in 2019, \(695*30*17=351,900\$\) in 2020, and \(349*30*17=177,990\$\) in 2021.

Any additional RTH saves roughly $510, such that returning even an extra 10% of the stray intakes for 2021 would result in saving roughly $100,000.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay Median_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 4608 26.00 11
Cat Return to Owner 92 2.09 1
Dog Other Outcomes 12485 31.25 18
Dog Return to Owner 3041 2.55 1

Supporting Data

Distances Traveled by Lost Dogs - 2017-2018

This section uses the outcome files received for years 2017 and 2018, because they include both a found location AND an outcome address for each animal, unlike the more recent files we have (for which an outcome address was never requested, so it makes sense it is not there). These two data points mean we could find out how far away do dogs go from home when they get lost (and are found).

Across both these years, there were 848 strays who had an RTO outcome. Out of those, 764 dogs had usable addresses for both found and outcome locations, after excluding addresses that could not be easily converted to a precise location (common themes: ‘mile X of road Y’, ‘see memo’, ‘local canal’, or a missing value). For each dog, the listed intake address and owner addresses were geocoded (using Google’s geolocation service), and then the distance between the two points was calculated. Some addresses were geocoded incorrectly and were removed, as were dogs with a distance of more than 40 miles between the two points, which were few. Some of these can be corrected if needed. This filtering left a total of 704 dogs.

Of these dogs, 51% were found less than a mile away from home, and half of those (25% of all dogs) were found less than a block away from home. 20% of all dogs were found more than 5 miles away. The distribution of distances is shown in the following figure.

The map below shows the median distance walked by dogs found at each ZIP code, as well as the number of stray dogs found in it. The median is a better indicator in this case because even after removing strong outliers, some dogs who were found particularly far from home would skew the average distance. It looks like some

Stray Intake and RTH By Found ZIP

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by ZIP codes to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per ZIP code.

These maps use the 2017-2018 data because it is currently not possible to map the number of strays and rates of RTH per area in the more recent files, as there are no ZIP codes associated with each intake record. However, there is a crossing address, and we could work on cleaning these up and transforming them into a ZIP code or geolocation for mapping.

Stray Intakes

RTH Rate

RTH Rate per ZIP code.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists.

Found and Outcome Zipcode

It is also not possible to show whether animals were found in their home ZIP code and whether finders found animals in their home location because these ZIP codes are not present.

Data Status

  1. There are no frequently missing values!
  2. As mentioned, there is a found location, but it seems to include mostly street name and number, which makes it harder to analyze. Also, the addresses seem to repeat a lot.
  3. There is a ‘microchip’ value in both intake subtype and outcome subtype value options, but they are both used very infrequently. An indication of microchip upon intake could be helpful for analyzing prevalence and relationship to RTH.
  4. There are about 8 values of intake subtypes that were used less than 10 times – it might help to remove some values off this list (Confined, Boarding, Court Order, County - Straym Kab Specimen, Hoarding, Quarantine, Transport Transfer)
  5. Same goes for outcome subtype with even more values.

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Exact distances traveled by lost dogs from home, if home (outcome) address was also collected for successful RTH.
  2. Prevalence of microchips across town (for example, are there areas from which more animals come in without chips?) and the RTH rates for animals found with/without chips.
  3. Reclaim fees (could be a yes/no to track fee waiving).
  4. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by public (if this data is accessible to the shelter; these two would allow showing $ saved by public RTH).